CAMP PENDLETON – Authorities have tracked down what could be missing body parts of an Iraqi prisoner who died in a Marine-run jail in Iraq, the lawyer for a Marine facing court-martial said yesterday.

The development comes a week after a judge ordered government officials to find out what happened to the rib cage and hyoid bone of inmate Nagem Sadoon Hatab, who died at the Camp Whitehorse jail near Nasiriyah in June 2003.

Maj. Clarke Paulus faces a court-martial in connection with Hatab's death. His lawyers have demanded access to the body parts in order to conduct their own scientific examination of the inmate's injuries. Paulus's court-martial has been postponed while authorities searched for the missing bones.

Earlier this week, authorities at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., found a rib cage in a refrigerator, Paulus' lead lawyer, Keith Higgins, said yesterday. A label indicated the rib cage had been sent from Kuwait, but there was no name tag on the bag containing the bones, Higgins said.

"Now they're doing DNA analysis to see if it's Hatab's," he said.

Higgins also said Hatab's larynx has turned up in a refrigerator at a military base in Landstuhl, Germany, where the Army colonel who conducted Hatab's autopsy was stationed. It was unclear yesterday whether authorities have found Hatab's hyoid bone, which is attached to the larynx.

Paulus' lawyers want to examine the hyoid bone to see if it was broken, as the autopsy contends it was. Among other charges, Paulus is accused of assault for ordering a lance corporal to drag Hatab by the neck to an outdoor holding pen after the inmate defecated on himself.

Paulus' legal team also wants to examine the dead prisoner's rib cage to see if the injuries to the ribs can be dated. After his death, it was discovered that Hatab had six fractured ribs.

In her autopsy, Col. Kathleen Ingwersen said Hatab died of either strangulation or asphyxiation caused by a broken hyoid bone. At a subsequent hearing, she testified that she sent the hyoid bone to the Institute of Pathology after the autopsy.

The institute had been unable to locate the hyoid bone or the ribs, saying it only had some fluid and tissue from Hatab's body.

Paulus' court-martial had been scheduled to begin this week. The military judge, Col. Robert Chester, postponed the trial last week after prosecutors acknowledged that they couldn't figure out what happened to the bones.

A hearing had been scheduled for today, but it has been postponed to Sept. 30 in response to the latest developments, Higgins said yesterday. Paulus' court-martial has been rescheduled for Nov. 1, Higgins said.

Noting that the defense has been asking to examine the body parts for nearly a year, Higgins said the inability of the government to keep track of this evidence "calls the reliability of the system into question."